A Non-Libertarian
FAQ

Mike Huben maintains an interesting site
which includes some fairly detailed criticisms of libertarian
arguments. It occurred to me some time ago that it would be worth
writing a response, with the objective of creating a webbed debate--a
set of arguments and responses linked to each other via hypertext,
and changing over time as one participant or another modifies his
position or arguments. This is the first draft of that response. It
is aimed at the document "A Non-Libertarian FAQ," which is only one
part of his critique. The number preceding each quote is linked to
the relevant section of the document.

1.They are utopian because there
has never yet been a libertarian society (though one or two have come
close to some libertarian ideas.)

A utopia is an ideally perfect society, not
merely a society that has never existed.

To see the difference, consider a writer in 1600
describing the sort of mass franchise liberal democracy that is
currently the standard form of political organization for developed
societies. No such societies existed in 1600 or ever had existed. Yet
such a society is by no means ideally perfect--indeed, most of us
agree that there are quite a lot of things wrong with it, although we
disagree about just what they are and what should be done about
them.

No doubt some libertarians (and some socialists
and some liberals) believe that their preferred institutions would
work flawlessly, but utopianism is not an essential feature of
libertarianism. For evidence, consider my book The Machinery of
Freedom. In it I propose quite a radical version of
libertarianism--a society with private property but no government.
Having done so, I then describe possible circumstances in which those
institutions would produce unlibertarian results--specifically, laws
against the use of some drugs. I defend the institutions not on the
grounds that they are perfect but on the grounds that they are likely
to produce better results than any other institutions I can think
of.

There is at least one important sense in which
libertarianism is less utopian than modern liberalism. Liberal
political rhetoric often assumes that the existence of any bad
outcomes--someone who is poor, some child who is not educated--is a
strong argument for government intervention to fix the problem.
Implicit in that is the utopian assumption that if only we had the
right institutions, nothing really bad would ever happen. Most
libertarians take it for granted that even under the best of
institutions, some bad outcomes will happen--although, of course,
they expect fewer bad outcomes to happen under their preferred
institutions. That is the point of the phrase "Utopia is not an
option," which Mike attributes to libertarians later in the
FAQ.

A second mistake in the quoted sentence is that it
identifies being a libertarian with holding the political goal of a
perfectly libertarian society. No doubt many libertarians hold such a
goal and regard it as achievable. But one can also be a libertarian
in the sense of wanting a more libertarian society but not expecting
ever to get and maintain a perfectly libertarian one. Robert
Heinlein, who has had a substantial influence on libertarianism,
seems to have held that position. His most libertarian work, The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress, describes an attractive
anarcho-capitalist society which has come into existence more or less
by accident and, given the opportunity, proceeds to convert itself
into a conventional democracy--a change the protagonists disapprove
of but cannot prevent.

What class interest? Libertarians are not a
class in any economically relevant sense. They include authors,
academics, students, workers--even a few capitalists. The most
overrepresented profession is probably Mike's.

3.
"Evangelists (those trying to
persuade others to adopt their beliefs) generally have extensively
studied which arguments have the greatest effect on the unprepared.
Usually, these arguments are brief propositions that can be memorized
easily and regurgitated in large numbers.

... Evangelists, who tend to be
more interested in effect than in accuracy,

Small wonder many people are not
interested in entering "discussions" with evangelists!"

Mike seems to forget in this passage that he
himself is, by his definition, an evangelist, and his FAQ, among
other things, an evangelistic document--while he is not evangelizing
for his own political beliefs, he is evangelizing for his belief in
the errors of libertarianism. Both he and it provide counterexamples
to the derogatory generalizations above. Evangelistic arguments can
be simplistic or sophisticated or (like his) sometimes one and
sometimes the other. Some evangelists are willing to sacrifice
honesty for rhetorical effectiveness, others are not.

4. I think the best way to interpret
the constitution is the way the founders explicitly specified in the
Constitution: look to the courts, especially the Supreme
Court.

There are two problems with this. The first is
that the principle of judicial review--that the Supreme Court gets to
determine what laws are constitutional--is not explicit in the
Constitution, although one can argue that it is implicit in Article
III Sections 1 and 2. It first appears explicitly in Marbury v
Madison--a decision of the Supreme Court.

A more serious problem is that this way of
interpreting the constitution leaves a Justice with no basis for
deciding what is or is not Constitutional--by its definition whatever
he decides is what the Constitution says. I can find no support in
the Constitution, explicit or implicit, for the idea that the
Constitution was defined as whatever the Supreme Court said it was.
Even if we accept the principle of judicial review, it is clear that
the Court, like existing common law courts, was supposed to discover
meaning, not invent it. If so, it is entirely legitimate for other
people to argue that the Court has, intentionally or unintentionally,
misinterpreted the document.

Mike recognizes this problem when he writes that
"This begs the question of how to judge the interpretive philosophies
of the possible justices, but libertarians seldom get that far." This
leaves him in the odd position of adopting a position that he
recognizes as incorrect and justifying it, apparently, on the grounds
that most libertarians won't notice.

I am curious as to how far Mike is willing to take
his form of interpretation. Does he endorse the verdict in Lochner
v NY, for example, which held that state regulation of the hours
of work of bakers was unconstitutional? Is it his view that such
regulations were inconsistent with the constitution during the first
third of the twentieth century, but consistent before and after that
period?

Consider the implication of the same approach for
an ordinary criminal case. The Constitution provides procedures by
which someone can be tried for murder. Is it Mike's position that if
a criminal defendant is convicted he is by definition guilty? That
makes precisely as much sense as saying that if the Supreme Court
approves of a law then the law is, by definition, consistent with
Constitution.

5.The foremost defenders of our
freedoms and rights, which libertarians prefer you overlook, are our
governments.

This is presented as if it is a fact when it
is actually an interpretation, and a highly contestable one at that.
Let me offer a few scraps of evidence to the contrary:

A. There are at least two different government
agencies in the U.S. (Customs and DEA) each of which annually seizes
about as much property as is taken in all private robberies (at least
as measured by the FBI statistics).

B. If we include taxation in property seizures,
the U.S. government annually takes about two orders of magnitude more
than all private criminals.

C. Governments in general in this century
(although not the U.S. government) have killed many more of their own
citizens than private murderers.

Mike can, of course, respond that private theft,
robbery and murder would be enormously higher if it were not for
government--but that is an interpretation, not a fact. What we know
is that private theft and robbery under regimes (the U.S. and Britain
in the 19th century) where governments spent about a quarter as much
of the national income as they do in the U.S. at present were trivial
compared to currrent government takings. There is also
some
evidence that the murder rate in 18th
century England, where most of what we think of as law enforcement
(catching and convicting criminals) was private, was not radically
different from the rate a century later, under modern institutions.
Finally, we have at least one example of a society with no government
expenditure on law enforcement at all (Saga period Iceland),
where the level of rights and rights protection appears to have been
at least as high as in contemporary societies with more conventional
institutions.

6.
... public defenders, the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights, etc.
all are government efforts that work towards defending freedoms and
rights.

Mike omits to note that this part of his list
consists almost entirely of government efforts to protect rights and
freedoms from infringement by the government. It is rather as if we
observed an unusually moderate thief, who had adopted a policy of
never stealing everything his victim owned, and described his
moderation as a private effort that worked towards defending
property.

7.Lots of other organizations
(many of which you would not want to be associated with, such as
Scientologists) also fight for freedom and rights. I prefer the
ACLU.

The problems with this, in the case of both
the Scientologists and the ACLU, are that it confuses rhetoric with
reality and, more seriously, blurs real disagreements about what
freedom and rights are.

For a simple example, consider the issue of fair
housing legislation--over which my father quit the ACLU many years
ago. The ACLU would claim that in supporting fair housing legislation
it is supporting the right of blacks, jews, etc. to buy or rent
housing. Libertarians would respond that nobody has the right to buy
something that the owner does not wish to sell, and that the ACLU was
actually attacking the right of an owner to decide whom he would rent
or sell his property to. Hence whether the ACLU's position was a
defense of rights or an attack on rights depends on what rights you
believe people have.

This is the point that Mike is getting at later in
this section when he writes "Nor might we need or want to accept the
versions of "freedom" and "rights" that libertarians propose." But
instead of actually arguing it, he rhetorically points out that
libertarianism is not egalitarianism--which while true, is not
obviously relevant to the question of what rights people do or should
have. Perhaps I was too quick, earlier in this response, to offer
Mike as a counterexample to his own comments on
evangelists.

8.It would be foolish to oppose
libertarians on such a mom-and-apple-pie issue as freedom and rights:
better to point out that there are EFFECTIVE alternatives with a
historical track record, something libertarianism lacks.

On the contrary, libertarianism, in its
earlier and somewhat more moderate incarnation as classical
liberalism, has a historical track record unmatched by any
alternative in recorded history. That record includes the abolition
of the slave trade, the institution of large scale free trade, the
destruction of guild restrictions on employment--most of the progress
of the 19th century, some of it reversed in the 20th.

9.Arguments about "mixing of
labor" with the resource as a basis for ownership boil down to
"first-come-first-served". This criticism is even accepted by some
libertarians, and is favorably viewed by David Friedman. This
justifies property taxes or extraction taxes on land or extractable
resources if you presume that the government is a holder in trust for
natural resources.

Two problems.

A. Mike neglects to mention my estimate that, in
the U.S. at present, total income from unproduced resources totals
only a few percent of national income. I suggest, as a moderate
compromise between his position and mine, that we reduce government
expenditure to the level that can be supported by taxing that income.
After observing the result of that experiment for a few decades, we
can then argue about whether further cuts are in order.

B. While I agree that private claims to unproduced
resources are morally problematical, I don't see how a government's
claim is any less problematical.

10.
The second is that taxation is
part of a social contract. Essentially, tax is payment in exchange
for services from government. This kind of argument is suitable for
defending almost any tax as part of a contract. Many libertarians
accept social contract (for example, essentially all minarchists must
to insist on a monopoly of government.) Of course they differ as to
what should be IN the contract.

While it may be true that minarchists need a
social contract to justify their support of a government monopoly
over the use of retaliatory force, my experience is that very few of
them, at least in the online population, make that
argument.

The obvious reason not to is that the social
contract argument doesn't work very well as anything more than a
metaphor. Contracts get their moral force, in the view of most
people, including most libertarians, from the agreement of the
parties. But the "social contract" has the form "I will give you
these services and you will pay me for them, whether you agree to or
not."

The standard response, and Mike's, is that you
"implicitly agree" by remaining in the country. But this works only
if the government already has the right to throw you out of the
country--i.e. if the government is somehow the owner of the entire
territory it rules. Without a social contract, it is hard to see how
you can justify such a claim. And until you can justify it, you can
't get your social contract.

I could, after all, propose a contract to Mike
under which he agrees to pay me a thousand dollars a month in
exchange for the valuable services I am providing by critiquing his
FAQ. I could also inform him that by breathing, he agrees to accept
that contract. But unless he already believes that he has no right to
breath without my permission, it is hard to see why he should feel
obligated to pay.

11.If you don't pay your
taxes, men with guns will show up at your house, initiate force and
put you in jail.

This is not initiation of force.
It is enforcement of contract, in this case an explicit social
contract.

"Explicit social contract" presumably means
"tax law passed by Congress." If I and my friends pass a law saying
that Mike owes us tribute, will he then interpret our showing up at
his front door, armed, to collect as merely enforcement of an
explicit contract?

Or in other words, he is claiming that the
obligation exists without having given us any good reason to believe
it. Absent the obligation, the libertarian description of the process
is correct. Mike begins to respond to these arguments in:

12.The constitution and the laws
are our written contracts with the government.

There are several explicit
means by which people make the social contract with government.
The commonest is when your parents choose your residency and/or
citizenship after your birth. In that case, your parents or
guardians are contracting for you, exercising their power of
custody. No further explicit action is required on your part to
continue the agreement, and you may end it at any time by
departing and renouncing your citizenship.

This assumes that the government already owns
the country, and thus has the right to require you to leave if you
don't agree to the contract. Where did it get that right?

13.Immigrants, residents, and
visitors contract through the oath of citizenship (swearing to uphold
the laws and constitution), residency permits, and visas.

Again, this only works if the government
already has the right to keep people out--which is one of the things
you need the social contract to get. Otherwise the "contract" is void
on grounds of duress.

My five year old occasionally decides that he is a
toll gate and demands a penny toll for permitting me to go through a
door or up the stairs. Suppose that twenty years from now, by which
time he will be stronger and Mike feebler than they now are, he
decides to do the same thing at Mike's front door when Mike is trying
to come home--and charge a higher price. No policeman being in sight,
Mike writes him a hundred dollar check, goes through the door, and
calls up his bank to stop payment. Is Mike violating a contract? If
not, how is an immigrant violating a contract when he decides not to
pay taxes?

14.Some libertarians make a big
deal about needing to actually sign a contract. Take them to a
restaurant and see if they think it ethical to walk out without
paying because they didn't sign anything.

The act by which one agrees to an implicit
contract is an act that the other party has the right to control--in
this case, coming into his restaurant and being served dinner. That
leaves Mike with two alternatives:

A. It is proper to treat an act that you do not
have the right to control as agreement to an implicit contract,
without the other party's assent. That implies that you can impose a
penalty (the amount you set as due on the contract) on that act,
which amounts to controlling it.

B. The government has the same rights with regard
to the territory of the U.S. that the restaurant owner has with
regard to his food and restaurant. But that is the conclusion he
wants to get from his argument, so starting with it makes his
argument circular.

15.You are not coerced to accept
US government services any more than you are coerced to rent or
purchase a place to live. If pretty much all territory is owned by
governments, and pretty much all houses and apartments are owned,
well, did you want them to grow on trees?

Again, Mike has the problem of justifying the
claim of governments to own territory. Early in his FAQ he points
out, correctly, that there are problems with private claims to
unproduced resources. But the implication of that, insofar as there
is an implication, is not government ownership but commons--if I
can't get ownership of the land, and you can't, then we can't, so the
land remains unowned.

Insofar as there are justifications for ownership,
they start with private actions and private ownership. Mike has still
offered no plausible mechanism for getting from that to a government
claim of ownership. As he presumably realizes, the real historical
mechanism, in almost all cases, was conquest.

16.
Extortion by the state is
no different than extortion by the Mafia.

This is a prize piece of
libertarian rhetoric, because it slides in the accusation that
taxation is extortion. ... The key difference is who owns what. The
Mafia doesn't own anything to contract about. The landowner owns the
land (in a limited sense.) And the US government owns rights to
govern its territory.

The Mafia don replies that of course he owns
the territory--if you don't believe him, go ask the current capo di
capi. If you don't like it, you are free to move to the territory of
a different don; if you remain, you are implicitly agreeing to accept
his "taxes." Why is his claim any less justifiable than the
government's? He provides you with protection against other dons,
just as the government provides protection against other
governments.

[All of this accepts the conventional picture
of the nature of the Mafia embedded in Mike's discussion; I am by no
means sure that picture is accurate]

This is a classic example of
libertarians not looking at the complete equation for at least two
reasons. (1) If taxes are eliminated, you'll need to purchase
services that were formerly provided by government. (2) If taxes are
eliminated, the economics of wages have changed, and wages will
change as well.

The response to (1) is that most of the
services provided by government cost far more than they would if
provided privately, and that quite a lot of them would be a bad
bargain even if they cost nothing. That includes the service of
making it illegal to consume various medical and recreational drugs,
the service of making it illegal to compete with existing firms in
various industries (less common now than a few decades back, but
still common), the service of making it harder to buy goods from
foreign countries, the service of holding up the prices of
agricultural products, ... .

The response to 2 is that if a reduction in taxes
resulted in a drop in pre-tax wages (which might or might not happen,
depending in a complicated way on the relevant supply and demand
curves) that would result in either lower prices or higher returns to
other factors of production, such as land and capital. All versions
of that story result in the gain eventually going to "us," although
different versions differ in the form we get it in and the
distribution among "us." Government taxation represents a real
consumption (or transfer) of resources, since the government spends
that money; ending it would free up those resources for alternative
uses.

The only versions of economics I can think of that
gives the result Mike needs for his argument (that a drop in taxes
results in drop in wages but no permanent gain to anyone) are 18th
and 19th century ones based on the "iron law of wages"--the idea that
population pressure always drives wages to subsistence. While that
idea played an important role in the development of economic theory,
it doesn't seem to have much to do with how real economies have
functioned in the past two centuries. And even with that model in its
sophisticated form (Ricardo), you end up in the very long run
(capital and labor both at equilibrium) with the benefit from
abolishing taxes going to the landowners.

Yes, the Federal government had
a much lighter hand then. However, state and local governments had
a much greater influence. There is not one class of positive duty
or obligation in the US today that did not exist 200 years ago at
state or federal level.

All the biggies were there except
income tax. The equivalent of income tax was property tax (on all
possessions) or head tax by many states. There was involuntary
conscription, eminent domain, etc. As a matter of fact, things got
much better when powers of states were interpreted to be restricted
by the US constitution (much later.)Local governments were more powerful relative
to state and federal governments, but less powerful in absolute
terms, at least as measured by expenditure. In 1902 local government
expenditure was about 3% of GNP. By 1973 it was almost 10%. [I'll
try to get earlier and later figures; these were the ones ready to
hand, and are approximate]

State governments were less important in the past
than they are now both relative to total government and absolutely,
again as measured by expenditure. In 1902, about 11% of all
government expenditure was by states; in 1973, about 20%.

It is true that 19th century America was not a
perfectly libertarian society, even for white males. But the relevant
question is how it compared to the situation at present. Measured by
government expenditure, it was more libertarian at every level of
government. Mike provides no alternative measure.

19.As a matter of fact, things
got much better when powers of states were interpreted to be
restricted by the US constitution (much later.)

Not "much later." 150 years ago is just
before the Civil War; the doctrine of incorporation is just
after.

I assume Mike realizes that the Justices who
supported the doctrine of incorporation, most notably Stephen Field,
the principle architect of the "Lochner era," wanted to use it to
(among other things) impose constitutional restrictions on state
economic regulation. I am curious as to whether Mike agrees with that
objective. Under those doctrines, applied at both the state and
Federal level, quite a lot of the government activity that
libertarians disapprove of would be unconstitutional.

20.
"Self government" is libertarian newspeak for "everybody ought to be
able to live as if they are the only human in the universe, if only
they believe in the power of libertarianism."

You don't need the power of
libertarianism--standard neoclassical economics gets you most of it.
To first approximation, the price system allows each individual to
use his resources to achieve his objectives without imposing net
costs on others--for details see the chapter on "What
is Efficient" in my (online)
Price
Theory.

One can make arguments for regulation based on the
second approximation--externalities and the like--but it is hard to
justify anything approaching the current level of government on that
basis. And the arguments for even a much lower level of government
become a great deal weaker when you start including market failures
on the political market in the analysis--or in other words, when you
drop the assumption that government will automatically make the right
regulations and instead try to figure out what regulations it will be
politically profitable to make, and what their consequences will
be.

21.They
[libertarians]
support the initial force that
has already taken place in the formation of the system of property,
and wish to continue to use force to perpetuate it and make it more
rigid.

...

Beyond this perceived class
interest, libertarian dislike of "initiation of force" isn't much
different than anyone else's.

I'm still waiting for Mike's explanation of
"class interest." Precisely what class does he believe would be
better off if we abolished private property? What class is better off
as a result of the infringements on strict private property that are
incorporated in current legal and political institutions? What class
do libertarians (all libertarians?) belong to?

Off hand, the only identifiable group I can think
of that is benefitted by the present system consists of lawyers (and
law professors, so libertarian law professors are included in the
class that should, on grounds of class interest, oppose libertarian
proposals).

22.The US government was NOT in
the business of proclaiming people free or slaves: that was a private
sector responsibility until that Evil Statist Lincoln stole that
sacred private right for the State.

State governments restricted emancipation,
sometimes quite strictly, so the business of proclaiming slaves to be
free was not entirely a private sector responsibility. And, of
course, it was the state courts that accepted and enforced the
slaveholder's claim to own his slaves. Furthermore, state governments
subsidized slaveholding by taxing the general population (in part
through conscription for anti-slave patrols). For details, see Jeff
Hummel's book Freeing Slaves, Enslaving Free Men..

One might even argue that a slave society in which
slaves had voluntarily sold themselves--an example would be
indentured servitude as a way of paying the cost of migrating to the
U.S. in the 17th and 18th centuries--is consistent with
libertarianism, although many libertarians would disagree. But black
slavery as it historically existed is consistent with private
property and free enterprise only if you ignore the question of what
can be owned and how ownership can be acquired. A society in which
slaves are taken by force is more nearly consistent with Mike's
position than with libertarianism. All we have to do is to view the
African tribes that captured and sold the slaves as governments, cut
and paste Mike's arguments in this FAQ about the rights of
governments and the social contract, and ... .

Mike does suggest one possible constraint on the
rights of governments that is relevant--freedom of out migration. In
order to justify black African slavery in his world, we may have to
require the slave owners to permit any slave who can transport
himself outside the relevant jurisdiction to do so. Of course, we
might also permit the U.S. to conquer Canada and Mexico, so as to
make it a little harder.

23.Don't be surprised if you
receive some ad-hominem abuse from libertarian evangelists when you
don't accept their arguments. It's no different than if a communist
called you bourgeois or a Bircher called you a commie lover.
...

Or if Mike Huben accuses you of believing
things because it is in your class interest.

24."A man is none the
less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a
term of years."

When you contract for government
services, you are a customer, not a slave. If you think you cannot
change with whom you contract, you have enslaved your
self.

And if you think you are a customer and can
"change with whom you contract" by any means short of leaving the
country, you haven't been following the argument.

25."Sometimes it is said
that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he,
then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found
angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this
question." (First Inaugural Address)

...Jefferson clearly had more
confidence in government than the initial quotation out of context
would imply. If libertarians want to adopt this position (as some
do), they'd be better off supporting it with something more than an
appeal to the inconsistent authority of Jefferson.

The point of the quote is not the authority
of Jefferson but the force of his argument. A large fraction of the
arguments for government regulation of individual action depend on
the implicit assumption that individuals act on their own
self-interest under conditions of limited information in market
contexts, but that government actors are fully informed and
benevolent--with no theory to derive the latter from the
former.

"We have the right to
defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals
that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the
arbitrary power of the omnipotent state."

The two red-alert-for-a-whopper
phrases in this quote are: "the kind of animals that we are" and
"true law".

People who compare us to animals
usually know little about animals and less about people. If we look
to animals for models we can find all sorts of unacceptable (and
conflicting) behaviors which are entirely natural.

People who answer arguments without reading
them are unlikely to produce useful rebuttals. James is making a
point not about "animals as models" but about the particular sort of
animals humans happen to be. The point may be right or wrong--his
.sig obviously summarizes a longer argument--but Mike's response is
irrelevent.

Beyond that, I will leave James to defend himself.
Why should I have all the fun?

This is the libertarian
newspeak formula for overlooking problems with their ideas. Much
like "Trust in Jesus". Used the way it commonly is, it means
"libertarianism might do worse here: I don't want to make a
comparison lest we lose."

I think I may have originated this phrase; in
any case I am happy to defend it. Mike starts his discussion by
criticizing libertarians for being utopians; he is now criticizing
libertarians for not being utopians.

The implication of "Utopia is not an option" is
"libertarianism might do worse here than a Utopia would, but since
Utopia is not an option that does not imply that it does worse than
some real world alternative would." It is a proper response to anyone
who says (as many do) "under libertarianism bad result X will occur,
therefore we should reject it," without offering an alternative set
of institutions under which neither X nor some equally bad Y (that
does not occur under libertarianism) would occur.

Mike responds to this by writing:

According to Perry Metzger, who
claims to have popularized the phrase, the correct usage is "you
*have* to make a comparison of libertarianism against the existing
system rather than against your ideals of what you'd like your system
to do." However, since there is no real example of libertarianism,
that would be comparing the real current system against an ideal
libertarian system. That's hardly a fair or valid
comparison.

1. There are real examples of more or less
libertarian societies, and of societies that in particular respects
were entirely libertarian, so we do have real world evidence to go
on.

2. In any case, even if we are talking about a
hypothetical libertarian society, hypothetical is not the same as
ideal. The sort of comparison Perry is talking about is not between
the outcomes libertarians want and some alternative but between the
outcomes that the critic claims (perhaps correctly) libertarianism
would produce and some alternative.

3. I would disagree with Perry's position (as
described by Mike) in one way. It is legitimate to compare the
outcomes libertarianism would produce with the outcomes an
alternative, also hypothetical, would produce. The crucial error is
to take as the alternative not the outcomes you have good reason to
think that your preferred system would produce but the outcomes that
you want it to produce--which I think is Perry's point.

Some
general comments

At the beginning of his FAQ, Mike points out that
since not all libertarians hold the same views an argument which is
correct against one libertarian may be irrelevant to another. It does
not seem to have occurred to him that the same thing is true of the
people libertarians argue with. Thus he attacks particular
libertarian arguments on the grounds that there exist some
anti-libertarian arguments to which that particular libertarian
argument is irrelevant, without noticing that those are not the ones
it is aimed at. For example:

The argument
about "self government" is largely
irrelevant to a defense of the EPA based on the problem of
externalities. But it is highly relevant to arguments for government
action based on paternalism, which are common, and somewhat relevant
to arguments that propose to use some combination of internalized
norms and social pressures to deter activities that are undesirable
but ought not to be illegal.

The quote
from Jefferson is irrelevant to some
attacks on libertarianism but highly relevant to attacks that
implicitly assume a philosopher king government--as many
do.

"Utopia
is not an option" is irrelevant to
arguments that claim to show that libertarianism works worse than
some practical alternative but relevant to arguments that point out
some undesirable outcome of a libertarian society as if that by
itself were sufficient grounds to reject it.

What
Mike Leaves Out

Early in his FAQ, Mike points out, I think
correctly, that there are some problems in the libertarian derivation
of initial ownership of property. He then goes on to argue as if
libertarians had no views at all on how things can justly become
property.

He thus omits a major component of the libertarian
approach to moral theory, leaving a fragment that is not merely
incoherent but empty--and much of his FAQ is merely the repeated
demonstration of that emptiness. Any set of acts, by government or by
private individuals, can be "justified" by appropriate assumptions
about what belongs to whom. Government taxation is merely the
enforcement of the government's property rights--if you start with
the assumption that the government has a property right to my income.
Slavery is merely the enforcement of private property rights--if you
start with the assumption that the slave owner has a right to own the
slave. On precisely the same basis, the Mafia protection
racket is merely the enforcement of
property rights if you believe that the local don has a property
right to tribute from those living in his territory--although at this
point in the argument, Mike unaccountably refuses to follow out the
logic of his own position.

Thus what Mike is attacking in much of his
argument is not only not libertarian moral theory, it is not a moral
theory at all, since it can equally well demonstrate any act to be
legitimate or illegitimate--according to what rights you assume the
actors have. To adequately answer libertarian arguments, Mike has to
take account of libertarian views on how things justly become
property--more generally on how rights are acquired. Those views are
inconsistent with slavery as it actually happened. They are also
inconsistent with most of Mike's social contract arguments. In order
to deal with those views, Mike will have to either broaden his attack
into a rejection of all moral theory--which I take to represent his
real views--or show why some alternative is more convincing than the
libertarian version.

Why This is an
Odd Argument for Us to be Having

There is one peculiar feature of this argument
that is worth pointing out. Most of it is about moral
philosophy--arguments that claim to show why things libertarians
disapprove of are (or are not) wrong. But Mike, so far as I can tell,
does not believe in moral philosophy--he seems to regard all
arguments about right and wrong as mistaken. While I do not share
that view, I do believe that arguments about moral philosophy are on
the whole less useful than arguments about economics--that we are
more likely to generate both truth and agreement by trying to figure
out what consequences institutions will have then by trying to figure
out what consequences we should desire. Thus the whole debate has an
odd element of shadow boxing--we are offering arguments and rebuttals
in a field which he does not believe in at all, and which I regard
with sufficient scepticism to prefer to base my arguments elsewhere.

"There may be two libertarians somewhere who agree
with each other about everything, but I am not one of
them."

Jonathan Andras has webbed a rebuttal
to many of the argument I give here. I have now webbed a
response.